Mr Wyeth graduated from Portsmouth University in 1991 with a Master of Engineering Degree in Civil Engineering.

He has 30 years experience in the water industry, with 26 of those years whilst working in South-East Asia. During this period Mr Wyeth has gained member status of the CIWEM (UK), is a Chartered Engineer, has gained a Graduate Diploma in International Operational Management and is the current Secretary of the IWA Water Loss Specialist Group

Mr Wyeth Started his career as a network modeling engineer for Biwater International and through this built up an expertise in how water supply systems operate. He then moved into NRW management, with Thames Water International and Ranhill Water Systems, gaining further expertise in leakage control, DMZ design & implementation, system monitoring, customer metering and production metering.

He also established the APAC regional office for i2O Water, specialists in advanced pressure management, where he was APAC managing director for 4 years. He further improved his experience of pressure management whilst managing the regional office for Singer Valves, a manufacturer of pressure control valves.

He is currently the Managing Director of Wyeth Water Consultants a Malaysian based NRW Management Company. 

Carbon Intensity and How it Affects Management of Carbon Emissions

Introduction

Importance of Reducing Carbon Emissions and how it relates to Real Loss

Interest in carbon reduction to combat climate change has been growing rapidly since the mid 2000’s. In 2015, the Paris Accords were established to influence a societal change to a carbon neutral future. The Paris Accords specifically seek to limit the mean rise in global temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, among other stated measures intended to benefit humanity in combatting climate change. These Accords are responsible for numerous policies and legislation enacted by the European Union and 193 other signatory member states to align financial incentives with a greener future. The financial incentives aim to inspire breakthroughs in technology for production of greener energy and/or direct reduction of carbon emitting practices. Reduction of carbon-emitting practices that accompany the production of useful items and services is as critical to carbon neutrality as production of greener and more sustainable energy.

Real Loss (leakage) is generally defined by the International Water Association (IWA) as leakage resulting from failed distribution system infrastructure. Unmanaged leakage is a problem that is already being addressed by various global entities. However, the carbon impact of that leakage has not been definitively established. Every unit of water distributed by a utility, results in the production of a certain amount of greenhouse gas emissions (carbon cost) due to the energy expended in the extraction, treatment, pumping and distribution of that unit of water. These emissions are known as Scope 2 emissions, which are indirect emissions an entity is responsible for as a result of purchasing carbon intensive electricity used in an entity’s operations. Every unit of water lost to leakage results in carbon emissions that would otherwise be avoided if such leakage were reduced. In general, it is not economically viable for a utility to eliminate 100% of its leakage. However, utilities can, and should, strive to achieve the technical minimum that is possible. Excessive leakage provides no benefit for the utility or its customers and therefore, carbon emitted in the process is unnecessary. It can also be reasoned that for those utilities with renewable energy sources, excessive leakage represents a waste that could be otherwise used to further offset carbon-emitting energy sources.

Key Concepts

Water Balance

Understanding a utility’s carbon footprint requires an understanding of the core concepts of a utility’s water balance. The Water Balance is a term used to describe the complete input and end use of drinking water within a utility. The Standard Water Balance was the result of an analysis by the IWA Water Loss Task Force and the Performance Indicators Task Force of various best practices from multiple countries, with the original version published in 2000². The Standard Water Balance has further evolved since that time and is now utilized across the world by utilities, technical organizations, consultants, regulators, and international funding agencies. It is critical to understand the Standard Water Balance when trying to quantify a utility’s resulting Carbon Balance. The Standard Water Balance establishes a volume for all sources, uses, and losses, quantified from a utility’s own specific data. The Carbon Balance aims to quantify the amount of carbon attributed to each of those same sources, uses, and losses (including leakage) for a given utility.

Real Losses (Leakage)

Real Loss generally represents the amount of water that is lost by utilities due to physical leaks. This leakage is quantified within the Standard Water Balance. Portions of this leakage can be reduced or avoided entirely by proper pressure management and renewing or repairing existing infrastructure. While this paper seeks to quantify and reduce the carbon emissions component of leakage, the end result will also deliver benefits in the form of supply-side water conservation through reduced leakage, increased availability and reduced production costs. Utilities should already be doing what they can to reduce leakage. However, additional emphasis is needed for finding, funding, and repairing infrastructure to reduce leakage long term. Many utilities enact only temporary mitigative measures to control leakage, and some may not manage leakage at all if they do not have the resources available. In most cases, existing excessive leakage levels are a direct result of a limitation of resources available to implement leakage reduction strategies.

Energy Intensity

Energy intensity is defined as the amount of energy used to produce a given level of output. In the context of drinking water systems, energy intensity is the amount of energy it takes to extract, treat, and deliver water. Depending on where water is sourced from, a utility may use more or less energy in the scope of such extraction, treatment, and distribution. Some utilities may be able to deliver water with minimal energy input s thanks to a variety of factors such as gravity delivery, reduced treatment needs, and minimal head losses in the pipes. Other utilities may have vast amounts of energy usage due to intense pumping requirements, poor source water quality, high head losses, and/or desalination. Excessive leakage can lead to over-sized infrastructure. The combination of these factors establishes a utility’s energy intensity.

Carbon Intensity

Carbon Intensity is the variable by which the carbon cleanliness of a utility is measured. A utility will use energy from a specific source or combination of sources in the extraction, treatment, and distribution of water. The carbon emissions associated with that energy can be measured by determining the electricity production source that a utility’s power company uses. A large majority of power companies will use a mix of several different production sources such as coal, gas, and renewables. When the energy carbon emissions variable is determined, it can be linked to the amount of energy used by the utility. This yields an amount of carbon emissions per unit of water which can then be applied to each component in the Standard Water Balance, including leakage.

Technical Performance Indicators for Carbon Emissions from Real Loss

Calculated Total Carbon Emissions in Tons

Carbon markets have existed as far back as the early 2000s and the vast majority of carbon avoidance and reductio n projects measure their effectiveness in tons of carbon saved. Companies seeking to achieve carbon neutrality likewise measure their total emissions in tons of carbon. As such, it is most effective for the Carbon Balance to measure carbon emissions for a utility’s operations in tons of CO₂ equivalent.

Targeted Reduction of Carbon Emissions in Tons

The goal of carbon avoidance from leakage reduction is naturally linked to the existing leakage level. An initial Carbon Balance study is required to determine the baseline level of leakage from which a utility will seek to reduce its leakage and hence the carbon emissions associated with it.

In most cases utilities are not capable of eliminating 100% of their leakage. Even the smallest of utilities can have hundreds of kilometres (or miles) of infrastructure that make it uneconomical to detect and repair every leak. Ideally, most utilities should target an economically feasible target level of leakage. This targeted leakage reduction amount will be multiplied by the carbon intensity of a utility’s unit water to calculate a targeted level of carbon reduction. By forecasting an amount of carbon reduction over a number of years, a project can also seek financing for improvements with the promise of reducing carbon emissions over a specific timeframe.

At the outset of the project, a Water and Carbon Balance could be defined for each year to quantify the benefits. Environmental attribute s could then be generated according to leakage emissions reduction and transacted to generate revenue for the project funder, be it the utility or a third party.

Calculated Carbon Emissions per Unit of Water

When carbon intensity of energy usage is determined, a utility can then calculate approximately what amount of carbon is being emitted per unit of water delivered. This Carbon Intensity Value can then be multiplied by the amount of water attributed to every element within the carbon balance. This will allow a utility to understand exactly how much carbon they are emitting across their entire water supply chain.

Financial Incentives for Reduction of Leakage Based Carbon

At the time of publishing, there does not exist a cap-and-trade or other similar market structure to incentivize investment in leakage emissions reduction. What follows is contemplation of a framework for such a market structure.

Validation and Verification of Carbon Reduction

Verification bodies who would audit registered projects in accordance with a specific protocol to ensure that they are properly generating any environmental attributes.

Registering Carbon Leakage projects would be a critical step to building credibility for any type of leakage emissions protocol, providing a mechanism to verify the leakage emissions reductions. The value of any environmental attributes associated with leakage emissions reductions would therefore be directly tied to the validation of said reductions.

Carbon Leakage Credits

Carbon Leakage Credits (CLCs) could be environmental attributes that are generated each year when a utility reduces their leakage below the initially set benchmark. When these credits are generated in accordance with a protocol, they could then be sold to corporate organizations who may apply them to offset their own carbon emissions. A project could forecast a target level of leakage reduction to seek financing for improvements needed to achieve said reduction.  Each CLC would represent one ton of carbon avoided by a utility reducing its leakage below its benchmark leakage level. When the initial leakage benchmark is set, a carbon balance is conducted each year to measure how effective a utility’s improvement efforts were. As more leakage is reduced below the benchmark, more credits are generated. The implementation of CLCs are intended to incentivize aggressive reduction of leakage by utilities. These credits may be warranted when current efforts to curtail leakage are hindered by financial difficulties, and the leakage emissions would likely continue without further financial incentive. These credits could also represent a quantifiable amount of water conservation that would likely have not been achieved without the implementation of such a program. Conservation of drinking water supplies has been a growing issue worldwide. CLCs could be the only credit that represents reduction of both carbon emissions and water usage.

Promote Outside Corporate Investment on a Community Level

The representative reduction of carbon through generation of environmental attributes is a model that has been in place for decades. This has enabled the implementation of carbon reduction projects that likely would not have existed without a supplemental revenue stream. Corporate entities engaged with the Leakage Emissions Protocol could then identify and work with local utilities to help them reduce their leakage, thereby positively impacting a specific community by promoting both carbon reduction and water conservation.

Conclusion

The water utility industry itself has sufficient awareness of the importance of managing real loss. However this is rarely connected to the environmental impact of consuming energy to produce water which is then lost before it reaches the customer. Because of this, funding for continued improvement of real loss management is getting harder to come by whereas that for reducing carbon emissions has seen an explosion over the past two decades.

Consumers are much more likely to be influenced by the carbon impact that their purchasing choices have. Although water conservation is certainly due the same influence and awareness, the reality is that more information on the overall impact that real loss has should be shared. This additional awareness can help influence outside corporate investment for long term sustained improvements to infrastructure and technology upgrades that can encourage water utilities to improve their operations and make step to achieve carbon neutrality. Outside investment can also assist to individually improve specific communities who are underfunded or disadvantaged. Investors benefit by building local goodwill, generating positive public relations, and being able to retire environmental attributes that will offset their own carbon emissions and water usage. This initiative may also pave the way for a water specific environmental market that operates off of water conservation demand alone.

Real loss is an unnecessary drain on valuable resources that could be responsibly consumed elsewhere. It would have been ideal to eliminate real loss entirely if it were physically and economically feasible. Since in most cases it is not, it is necessary to find a balance of sustainable leakage that can be eliminated. The implementation of a Carbon Balanceas part of the Standard Water Balance will help to influence applying protocols and generation of environmental attributes that will help strengthen the economic feasibility of finding and repairing more leakage. The end result is a newfound urgency and action to assist utilities and society as they continue to strive for environmental sustainability. 

Thomas Allen is a digital water leader with over a decade of experience delivering innovative solutions to the water industry. With a specialist background in smart water metering, Thomas began his career in the UK, overseeing data and operations for the country’s first large-scale smart metering project. This involved managing and analysing data from over 400,000 connected smart meters, laying the groundwork for a deployment that has since surpassed 1 million meters. Thomas then relocated to Singapore to lead the nation’s AMI demonstration project, which involved over 300,000 AMI water meters. He currently heads the RSK Digital Water team, providing strategic support to Hong Kong’s smart metering programme. 

Navigating Your Next Smart Metering Step

With hundreds of options on how, what, and where to deploy smart water meters, how do utilities find the right combination for success, regardless of whether they’ve started or not?

This session provides insights into a metering playbook designed to help water utilities navigate the complexities of adopting smart technologies. Key decisions revolve around selecting the right meter type to ensure accurate and long-lasting performance, communication protocols to ensure optimal connectivity, and defining the project’s benefit focus.

Equally important is data handling: balancing the volume and frequency of data collected, integration with existing systems, and implementing robust cybersecurity measures to protect sensitive information. This all hinges on correctly defining the desired outcomes from the start. Should smart metering aim to enhance leak detection, improve operational efficiency, or drive customer engagement? Why not achieve all three?

An interactive portion will demonstrate how smart metering data can be utilised for real-time water balance calculations, showing its potential to pinpoint losses and optimise water management strategies. Participants will engage with data scenarios to explore how smart meters contribute to reducing non-revenue water.

By the end of this session, participants will have a clear framework to make informed decisions and drive successful smart metering implementations tailored to their specific needs.